Field of Application
This invention relates to the field of electronic devices for the analysis of a gas composition, based on the control of gaseous flows, and on a generation and control of ion flows.
The invention likewise includes methods of analysis of a gas composition present in the environments to be analyzed, for example, industrial process environments.
Description of the Prior Art
Numerous systems and devices are known for the analysis of the gas composition of a gaseous flow, for example analytical systems employing mass spectrometers.
These known systems act “a posteriori”, with respect to a process with generation of is gas to be analyzed, since they typically operate on gaseous flows, injected in them, coming from the environment to be analyzed.
Moreover, these known systems operate by means of an ionization of gas flows, which requires an ionization environment maintained at vacuum pressures (i.e., below 1 mbar, and preferably around 10−3 mbar). For this reason, such systems must be equipped with bulky and expensive pumping means, suitable to extract from the ionization environment a large part of the flows injected for analysis, to create the vacuum conditions necessary for ionization. Therefore, the analysis is performed on gaseous residues that remain in the ionization environment, obtained by subtraction from the injected flows.
The known systems mentioned above have various drawbacks.
First of all, they are relatively expensive and bulky, for the reasons explained above: in fact, they may more properly be referred to as “systems” and not “devices”.
In addition, the precision of the analysis depends on the fidelity with which the gas composition to be analyzed is represented by the vacuum-pressure gaseous residues obtained as a result of the pumping. Such precision may be inadequate for most applications, possibly requiring complex procedures and systems for correction and adjustment.
Finally, in these known solutions, it is not possible to improve the precision of the analysis, while the analysis is being performed, by enriching, in a controlled manner, the gas composition to be analyzed.
On the other hand, in a growing number of important applications, the need emerges to have devices for the analysis of gaseous flows that are compact, portable and inexpensive and also precise and reliable, so “top-of-the-line”.
This can be advantageous, for example, for the analysis of gas compositions in an industrial environment, or for the analysis of discharge gas of an industrial process, downstream of the process, and without interfering with it.
It is also clearly desirable to have gas analysis devices that, while ensuring sufficient precision and reliability, are increasingly miniaturized and compact, which would considerably enlarge the field of application, to the point of, ideally, achieving miniaturized “gas composition sensors” installable in cars, airplanes, pollution detection controllers and so on.
As illustrated above, the known systems for gaseous analysis are not able to meet the above-mentioned desired requirements or the above-mentioned needs.
In light of the above, the object of this invention is that of devising and making available a device for analyzing gaseous flows, and related methods, employing such a device, that are improved so as to meet the above-mentioned needs, and that are able to overcome, at least partially, the drawbacks described above with reference to the known art.